Nine days, four rebuilt trucks and no schedule but the light. We take the long way across volcanic plains and dune seas, camp where the track runs out, and bring you home a little quieter than you left.
We started with one truck, a borrowed map and a single rule: never drive faster than the conversation. Twelve seasons on, the rule still stands, and so does the truck.
Ines & Tomas Varga, founders
Every route is a loop from our yard at the edge of the plateau. Small convoys, one guide in every truck, nights spent where the road gives up.
A loop over the old volcanic plateau: black plains at dawn, steam rising from the vents, and a night on the rim of a crater with nothing lit for fifty kilometres.
from€2,900
See the route
A hundred kilometres of flat white nothing, then mountains that look close for a whole day. Bring sunglasses and a good book for the evenings.
from€2,300
Dates and prices
Low tyre pressure, long shadows and a camp so far from any road that the only sound at night is the sand moving. We teach you to drive it on day two.
from€2,650
Dates and prices
Up from the desert floor to a pass at 4,200 metres, then down through pine forest to a lake cold enough to make you shout. Our longest and slowest loop.
from€3,400
Dates and prices
Four trucks built between 1979 and 1991, stripped to the frame in our yard and rebuilt with new engines, fridges and roof tents. Slow, loud and completely reliable.
Short-wheelbase 4x4, 1979
Long-wheelbase wagon, 1984
Support truck, 1991
Short pickup, 1982
A sample of how the days run. The route bends to the weather and to whoever wants to stop for a photograph, which is usually everyone.
Day 1
Meet the crew and the trucks, pack the fridges, then an easy three hours to a camp inside a canyon.
Days 2–3
Tracks over ash and old lava flows to a field of basalt towers. Most guests take the wheel here for the first time.
Day 4
The hardest climb of the loop, paid back with a camp on the rim and a sky with nothing else in it.
Days 5–6
Sixty kilometres of empty road towards the mountains. We stop wherever somebody asks.
Day 7
A rest day. Tomas cooks over the fire and the guides tell the stories they save for the last week.
Days 8–9
Over the pass into pine forest, a very cold swim, and a slow last drive back to the yard.
Good driving days per month on the plateau, counted from our own logbooks since 2014. Convoys run from March to November; in the heat and the snow we rest the trucks.
Four of us run every convoy. Between us we have fixed most things that can break in a desert, usually more than once.
Ines
Ines VargaFounder, lead driver
Rebuilt her first truck at nineteen. Drives the front vehicle and chooses every camp.
Tomas
Tomas VargaMechanic and cook
Can fix a gearbox by torchlight and bake bread in a pot buried in the sand.
Amara
Amara DialloDesert guide
Grew up on the edge of the dune sea and reads sand better than any map we own.
Kai
Kai BrennanNavigator, photographer
Keeps the logbooks, the satellite phone and the best photographs of every trip.
I have been on expensive trips before. This is the first one I still talk about every week.
Tomas fixed a snapped axle in the dark and still had dinner ready by nine. I would trust these people with anything.
Daniel OkaforLava fields, 2025
The quietest week of my life, and somehow also the one with the most laughing.
Sofie BrandtSalt pan, 2024
I had never driven off-road. By day three Amara had me crossing dunes I would not have walked up.
Priya RamanDune sea, 2025
No wifi, no schedule, no regrets. Ask for the roof tent on the wagon.
Lukas MeierHigh pass, 2024
Our kids still draw the crater camp from memory, stars and all.
The Moreau familyLava fields, 2025
Honest about the hard days and generous with the good ones. We are going back in spring.
Hana and Joel ParkDune sea, 2023
Kai's photographs from the last three seasons. Nothing staged, nothing borrowed, a fair amount of dust on the lens.
€1,650€5,400per personper truck, up to four
€2,900€9,800per personper truck, up to four
€4,200€14,500per personper truck, up to four
No. Most guests have never left the asphalt. We teach you on day two on easy ground, and a guide sits beside you until you ask them to stop.
In roof tents on the trucks or on camp beds in canvas tents, your choice. On most routes one night is spent in a small guesthouse with hot showers.
Tomas cooks breakfast and dinner over fire or gas; lunch is a long picnic wherever we stop. Tell us about diets when you book and we plan the shopping around them.
Yes, from eight years old on the salt pan and dune sea loops. The high pass is for twelve and up because of the altitude.
Tomas fixes it, usually within the hour. The support truck carries spares for nearly everything, and every vehicle has a satellite phone.
Full refund up to sixty days before departure, half up to thirty days. After that we move your seat to another date at no cost.
Tell us which loop and roughly when. We answer every message within a day, usually from the yard with grease on our hands.